ROBERT BRUSTEIN
533
[n one important sense, political correctness is even proving to be
counterproductive. When words like "racism," "sexism," or
"homophobic" are thrown around so promiscuously, they cease to have
any function except as epithets. If you are continually accusing well–
meaning people of prejudice, you may cease to recognize the genuine
article when you stumble upon it. How many have noticed, while the
media is preoccupied with earthquakes like the hurt feelings of black co–
eds or the incidence of "date rape," that the skinhead population of the
country is growing at an alarming rate? The noisy majority in the arts
and the universities may be successfully pushing guilt buttons, but the
much larger silent majority in the factories and on the farms is either suf–
fering compassion fatigue or preparing a violent backlash. (The white
supremacist plot for a race war in Los Angeles may be a harbinger.) That
is why liberals, who support the ends of social justice, must expose the
stupid means promoted by the politically correct before conservatives and
reactionaries abolish ends and means altogether.
[ confess [ have no easy solutions or ready suggestions to stem the
tide of this movement. At the moment, it is powerfully entrenched in
the present generation and the next. Anyone who works with young
people knows how indoctrinated most of them are in the ABCs of po–
litical correctness, how guilty some of them are about their white skins
and middle-class privileges. For PC spreads its tentacles not only into
culture and education, but also into television, radio, journalism, child–
rearing, even the Academy Awards. A Hollywood actor can't even open
an envelope anymore without mentioning the plight of the homeless or
deploring the situation in Tibet.
In his preface to
The Liberal Imagillation,
Lionel Trilling quoted
Goethe's remark that liberals have no ideas, they have only sentiments.
Obviously, little has changed in the intervening years. What has changed
is the virtual monopoly on ideas by the conservative camp. Trilling had
cautioned libera ls to take as their motto, "Lord, enlighten thou my en–
emies," because intelligent opposition was the only way he saw to de–
velop a sensible body of liberal thought. He did not foresee a time when
the opposition would dominate thinking, while liberals sat impotent,
mired in sentiment or paralyzed with guilt.
The growing library of books on PC, and this symposium, suggest
that liberals may at last be awakening from their long slumber. It is in–
cumbent on us now to spur the liberal imagination further before the
darker forces in our society initiate a reaction that none of us wants. An
important way to start is by recognizing that equality of opportunity is
not the same as equality of achievement. The democratization of art and
culture for political purposes will only make us dumber than we are, and
